Living in Dialogue

It has been two weeks since I posted my Open Letter to President Obama here, and began a Facebook group to collect letters from other teachers around the country. More than four hundred teachers have joined, and we have collected scores of letters. I plan to assemble all the letters and on Nov. 23rd, send them special delivery to President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan.

In the past few days, we have been joined in our effort by several outstanding teacher bloggers across the country. Here are some excerpts from their letters:

TeachMoore by Mississippi educator Renee Moore:

I am puzzled by the limited number of persons within the DOE, particularly at the senior level, with experience as highly effective or accomplished practitioners in public education. I would think that demonstration of the ability to close the achievement gap, to consistently do the complex work of teaching all students well, would be among the requirements needed to hold a top position in the federal agency that oversees education.

At the community college where I now work, the faculty recently investigated the writing skills of our incoming freshman over a six year period that paralleled the development of our state's language arts testing for public school students under NCLB. Our disturbing conclusion, borne out by hundreds of student writing samples as well as college entrance exam scores, confirmed that as the testing program accelerated, student performance correspondingly declined. A greater percentage of our incoming students exiting the public schools need remediation since the enactment of NCLB than before. Equally distressing is the disillusioning effect that this test focused culture has had on teachers and the chronic critical teacher shortages in the schools whose students were already significantly underserved. Scores of dedicated and talented teachers who want to work in high needs schools face unnecessary penalties for doing so. Not since the Brown decision, has a Federal action done so much damage to the education of those it was intended to help.

Middle School, day by day from a teacher's point of view, by Cossondra George

Funding for education is another issue which concerns me. My students deserve to have the same opportunities as students in more affluent school districts. While I realize that technology is simply a tool for teachers to use, more equitable distribution of technology resources needs to be a priority. Students at other schools are engaged with SmartBoards, new laptops with exciting software, and other gadgets that spark their imagination and creativity. My students are using laptops that are so old, most are missing multiple keys; their processing speeds are so slow working on them takes longer than handwriting a paper would; they have no cool software and won't even run online programs such as Google Earth. We cannot use our laptops to collaborate and communicate with students in other places. We cannot link to famous authors, mathematicians and scientists. We cannot use GIS software to analyze data. We are living and learning with 20th Century technology in a 21st Century world.

We are a rich nation, with many resources. Yet, too often our spending priorities are not aligned with what we say our priorities are. If our children are our priority, if we truly believe that education is the key to our future, then we need to fund education adequately. Educational opportunities should not be equitable to socioeconomic status. Our current educational system locks children of poverty into the same cycle as their parents. Until education is funded equitably and adequately, our students will not leave school prepared for their adult lives.

teacherken of the Daily Kos:

There is a basic question which I do not hear being addressed. What is the purpose of our having public schools? For me, it is to educate the whole person, to prepare our students to learn how to learn, to participate as citizens in a liberal democracy, to develop as persons, to be able to develop the skills that matter to them.

There are skills that employers will need, that we hope our children will develop. Might I suggest that being able to select the least worst from four or five choices on a multiple choice test is not high on the priorities of most employers? Are not things like the ability to work cooperatively, to learn to overcome differences, to persist, to come up with new approaches that might involve thinking outside the box, are all of greater value to almost every employer who wants anything other than a drone? Should not our schools reflect that in how they are structured, in how we teach?

Most of my students are 10th graders. Some are taking College level government in the sophomore years. Each year they have arrived in my classroom with less and less background, a direct outcome of the strictures of No Child Left Behind, which emphasized testing on reading and math, which because those scores were used to evaluate schools increasingly meant a narrowing of their educational experience. Many are frustrated with school, and have not learned how to develop ideas in speaking or in writing - these are not tested, therefore they are not valued. Tying teacher compensation mainly to test scores will only serve to exacerbate this problem.

Mary Tedrow wrote about the project at her blog, Walking to School:
Rather than reform through policymakers, we want reform through teacher voices.
I post the link so any fellow teachers can join their voices with others from around the country in getting lawmakers to heed the advice of career educators. We now have the electronic tools to make the classroom teachers' voice loom large. In addition, we are not affiliating ourselves with a union message - just talking about good practice and what works with our most struggling students. If you wish to have your voice included, please take a look at the site and add your vision.

From perusing some of the messages posted thus far, it is clear that accomplished teachers have a similar messages: Teaching is about building relationships, creating safety so young minds are willing to take risks, and running alongside our developing students rather than standing at the finish line keeping score.

Marsha Ratzel, Reflections of a Techie, writes:

Additionally we see more and more students who no longer get to do science in elementary schools. Under the microscope and intense pressure to perform better and better in reading and math, schools have cut time spent on anything but the tested subjects. One article I read said that time spent on nontested subjects (science and social studies) have been cut by 44%. 44%....can you imagine how dull it is to be in school where there is very little science and social studies. Can you imagine how ill prepared and how little background students have when they get to me at the middle school level? It's tragic.

The way in which your policy is moving is only going to continue this narrowing of curriculum. It is going to have the opposite effect that I think you want...it will not produce more scientists...in fact, I think students will be less and less interested in science if it is reduced to reading and answer fact based questions. The idea that the remedy for all the ills of science is a national curriculum...well, that's ridiculous. The only thing this will accomplish is more companies developing narrowly defined sets of facts that will generate more standardized tests for students. It isn't the curriculum that's the problem.

Please, please, please....you need someone include teachers in reform policy making. Clearly the people who advise you now don't have a clue what helps students in the classroom. I'd invite you to come to my room any time, any day and talk with my students. They'll tell you in a second what helps them learn more.

What do you think? Will you add your voice to the chorus? What would your Letter to President Obama say?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ten days have passed since I posted my Open Letter to President Obama. The Facebook group, Teachers' Letters to Obama, has grown to more than 300 members. Scores of teachers have posted their own passionate and insightful letters. I am compiling them all, and in a few days will have them delivered to the White House and Department of Education. Please come join us and share your own reality. The policymakers need to hear from us!

Unfortunately, this town, like many of the overlooked small towns in the nation, is suffering. With the state of the economy this year, what little industry that was here has been closed or has been forced to lay off a large number of employees. So, the small number of jobs is getting smaller. I have not seen any benefit of stimulus money, only more people jobless, fewer opportunities to find work, and high budget and salary cuts in the school system. The only people who can help the economy have been hurt the most: the average working citizens. These are the taxpayers who fund the school systems and the welfare that their neighbors live off of. The community is crumbling. How are extra regulations, standardized tests, and improvement-based funding going to relieve this problem? They will not, and cannot. We need new methods to build community stability and therefore enhance the county's educational system.
Elizabeth

I continue to be concerned with "merit pay." I work in an urban school which has been dealt many blows. Now, my immediate neighborhood has become more impoverished and we are serving almost 95% of our students FREE breakfast and lunch. On top of that, I am teaching in a special ed. kindergarten class. My students may never meet the critical mark forced upon us by the state. Does that mean I do not teach them? NO, but I have to teach them at the level they are at... I can't expect them to compose a sentence if they can not even write their name on a paper. My fear is that the current policies are going to punish teachers who choose to teach in my position because the population they teach is not ready to meet the standards that "someone" has set in place. What is to become of schools like mine? Chances are, quality teachers will be run off to districts that have a chance, and the students in my district will continually have new and inexperienced teachers.

I have been unhappy in my career path in the past few years because I feel that the TEST is all that we do. I have no freedom to teach my students about cultures, diversity, or community because I have to be teaching 2 hours of reading from the prescribed curriculum, math from the prescribed curriculum, and still expect exemplary behavior (without any time to teach and review it). My students now are not leaving my class any smarter than they did when I had more freedom to teach what they needed, while sneaking in a little fun and excitement. In fact, I think they are suffering because there is no magic left in my class...all there is are the TEXTS... which we have to use in order to improve test readiness.
Jennifer

I have taught young children for 14 years, and am appalled at the direction that education seems to be taking. My preschool students are mostly small town or rural children of poverty. I try to provide them with a nurturing environment which will stimulate their natural curiosity, love of learning and enjoyment of school. In recent years, kindergarten has become increasingly regimented, with little time for social interaction and much time spent working at tables or being lectured to.

The mandates handed down by the federal government do not reflect good practices or understanding of current research regarding how children learn. All this pressure on teachers and children to perform leaves little room for the things that make life and learning worthwhile: creative expression, the excitement of discovery, the joy of learning.
Martha Garner-Duhe, Lafayette, LA

Please allow us to address how the course set by you and Secretary Duncan will not create the future you are working toward in other areas of public policy. We believed you were listening to us. Now, we aren't certain. Allow America's teachers into your circle. Please create a National Forum for the Teacher Voice. We are policy leaders, researchers, authors, and curriculum experts. We work a second job on weekends to make ends meet and then purchase classroom supplies from our own pockets. We know that the high stakes tests that we are doing everything we can to help our students pass actually fail to equip them for jobs for which they must compete in the 21st Century.
Jennifer L. Barnett Teacher, Alabama

Update: Our letters posted here and on the Facebook site caught the attention of a reporter from NPR's Morning Edition, who phoned me a couple of days ago for an interview. The story ran yesterday, and can be downloaded here. He captured a small bit of our frustration, but we have a lot more work to do to get our message out.

What do you think of the perspectives shared here? What is the reality in YOUR school? What do you want our policymakers to know?

Photo by Anthony Cody

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Three days ago I posted this open letter to President Obama, asking him to take a closer look at the education policies being enacted by his administration. I invited people to add their own messages to President Obama in the comments, and set up a Facebook group for this purpose as well. Thus far 35 people have posted their thoughts in those places, and 163 have joined the Facebook group. Here is a sample of what is being said:

Teaching is the only profession I can think of where the experts (the teachers) are not the ones driving the reforms/formulating the policy. Instead we have the people who fled the classroom and spent the majority of their careers telling those of us who remained in the classroom how to be better at what they fled.

That would be like the guy who worked on cars for 2-3 years leaving the oil pit and spending the next 30 years telling mechanics how to fix your car. Who knows more about fixing your car? The one who quit fixing them?...or the one who stayed and did it year after year after year?

Exactly.

Teachers need to be the ones at the table - telling Congress what we need for them to do. Please pardon me for saying this - we teachers need to be telling you what we need for you to do. NOT the folks who taught for a couple of years and left to go on to decide policy the rest of their careers - but those of us who stuck with it and learned from our years of experience and advanced study.

Kelly Meuller, Missouri

Remember that policy levers (RTTT grants, pay for performance, national standards and tests, alternate entry into teaching, non-standard school governance models, and mandating high-tech statistical analysis of achievement) are merely things that policy-makers can do. We can expect those things to shift the balance of decision-making power. But we cannot and should not expect policy creation to shift actual classroom practice or change our mindset from "punishment" to "investment." Reaching our potential will never happen unless and until instructional practice--what happens between teachers and their students--radically changes.

Nancy Flanagan, Michigan

The most important thing I can teach is critical thinking. That isn't assessed on the standardized tests we use in our state achievement tests. Since we have had to teach to these tests there isn't as much time for teaching higher-level t...hinking. Also, creativity has fallen by the wayside. Creative thinking exercises are as important as ever, yet, there is no emphasis placed on giving students creative opportunities.

I hope President Obama will deliver on his promises and listen to those of us who are on the "front lines." Administrators and politicians really have no idea what we do. They don't realize that so many of us live to teach. Teachers need to be listened to and heard. Law makers need to support us so that we can support our students and give them what they need to be contributing citizens.

Roberta Zivanov

Those teachers we so fondly recall are still there, but now they are restricted by a system that instructs teachers to remove the creative process and instead teach their students to "critically" analyze between a set of possible responses to a given question and learn to recognize which of four possibilities is more correct than the other. So teachers have become coaches that reinforce strategies based on a formula that two of the responses will likely be ridiculously errant, while the two remaining possibilities will have a semblance of correctness, yet one answer is more perfect than the other, and it is the student's task to spot the more correct answer and make that selection.

When I was learning, the best lessons were the ones where the teacher through his/her initiative would inspire in the student the importance of the subject matter while challenging the student to develop the lesson further through the students own enterprise.

Albert Pardo

On the subject of merit pay, I would simply remind you that while some teachers have students who come to school prepared to take on the rigors of learning, others are not so well-prepared. Can we consider merit pay when it doesn't take into account the hand a teacher is dealt? I am reminded of the "Blueberry Story"---about a businessman (a business dealing with fresh fruits) who thought he could run schools just like a business, only to be reminded by a teacher, that, when HE receives a batch of blueberries that are not up to his standards, he can refuse to take them, teachers take each of these blueberries (students) as they come, with all their differences (ADHD, ADD, Autism, Asberger's, OCD, ODD, low/high IQs, etc.) and take each one as far as we can.

Jacque Verrall, Washington

I hope that President Obama would push for educational policies that mirror the private school education (Sidwell Friends) his daughters enjoy. Many politicians send their children to this school. Is Sidwell caught up in a testing frenzy? I have a relative who also attends this school and I've never heard any mention of the school curriculum focus being on improving test scores. Why is the Sidwell model not the model for public education?

Sigrid Wurthman

I respect your goals for education and the level of engagement you had on this topic while working in Chicago. But I am concerned that the approaches you are using will throw the baby out with the bath water. In attempting to reform education, much of the emphasis seems to be on YOUNG teachers as role models for what is right. I urge you to work more closely with veteran teachers who are successful with high-risk students. These teachers have been through the high-energy, ultra-involved phase that young teachers experience, but have avoided the burnout that leads many new teachers to give up in frustration. The oft-cited culprit for burnout is "the system;" but the goal of changing the ENTIRE system lacks focus, and therefore support, from some of the more experienced educators. Listening to successful long-term educators, in addition to younger teachers, would give the Education Department an idea of how to triage the areas of public education in need of attention. It would also avoid organized opposition to reforms.

Adrienne Mooney Karyadi

What do you think of these views? Will you add your own voice to the dialogue with President Obama?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear President Obama,

I was one of the millions of teachers across the USA who actively supported your candidacy. I organized a fundraiser with fellow educators, and walked my neighborhood precinct during the primary. I used my blog on Teacher Magazine to share your vision. I took heart when I read on your campaign website:

Obama believes teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

You have spoken eloquently of a new era of mutual responsibility for our schools, and have called on parents to take a greater role in their children's education. The provision of health care for families without it will be a tremendous help to our students, so this work is deeply appreciated. This year ARRA funds have saved many thousands of teachers' jobs, but we have a huge problem looming. State budgets, and the schools that depend on them, remain in dire straits. It appears that Race to the Top funding will not be used to save jobs or plug massive holes in state budgets, but instead will be used to "drive reforms." But these reforms do not enact the vision you have put forward.

As it stands now, Secretary Duncan has initiated policies to:

• "Turn around" 5000 of the nation's "worst" schools (based on test scores) although recent reports from Chicago reveal that the 5,445 students displaced by his school closures there did not do any better than before.


• Tie teacher pay to test scores, though research and common sense suggest this will result in even more narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test.


• Insist, in spite of more and more research that questions their effectiveness, that charter schools should be dramatically expanded.


• Rank teacher preparation programs - once again, by how well they increase student test scores

We have had eight long years of No Child Left Behind, which systematically assaulted our schools by establishing impossible to meet test score targets and Byzantine rules about subgroups. Your election a year ago was supposed to change all that. But thus far the policies we see are actually worse than before.

We can agree that teacher quality is critical for the success of our schools, but test scores are a wholly inadequate means to measure or improve quality. Furthermore, you have a Secretary of Education who is not listening to teachers. Teachers need to be active partners in school reform at every level, from the classroom up to the cabinet meeting. Right now our views are being shut out and ignored, and we are not represented. This is driving morale down at a time when our schools need to rally together for our students.

If teachers are demoralized and sidelined, we are lost as partners in the change process. We will remain the subjects of change rather than agents, and our creative vision will be missing. This is the biggest reason NCLB has failed, and will continue to fail under Secretary Duncan so long as he maintains this direction.

It does not have to be this way. Teachers are ready for change, ready for mutual responsibility, ready for better assessments of student learning that honor our classroom practice and our students' capacity for critical thinking. We are ready, but we are still waiting to see these things.

I urge you to take a closer look at the policies that are being implemented by the Department of Education.

• Review the report recently offered by the National Academy of Sciences which points out many flaws in the Race to the Top guidelines.


• Review research that reveals that charter schools are no better on average than their public school counterparts.


• Pay attention to the continued narrowing of the curriculum that you decried as a candidate.


• Listen to the deeply held concerns of this nation's classroom teachers.


• Hold your Secretary of Education accountable for enacting the vision that you campaigned on, that gave so much hope to millions of teachers and students across this country.

Your supporter still,

Anthony Cody

What do you think? Will you join me in signing this letter? Or authoring your own? What would you tell Obama if he joined you for lunch today?

image by Anthony Cody

Update: I created a Facebook group to allow teachers to post their own letters to President Obama, or sign on to others that are posted. Come and speak your mind.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)